It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate.

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From WBEZ.

What's up Chicago? I'm Erin Allen.

Chicago has a long history with organized crime. Come on. It's the home of Al Capone.

We have a number of gangster and mobster

crime tours in the city, so when Curiosity gets questions about this, we usually leave them alone

because there's already so much out there. But this week, Curiosity listener, Matt Ebert,

brought us a question about how his own family fit into that history.

After his cousin stumbled upon an old newspaper story about the family patriarch, Emmett Ebert.

Kind of like a mythical figure, sort of, which I feel like happens a lot when you don't know.

Your grandparents, he died a few years before I was born.

Curious City's Justin Bull, has that story.

Emma Ebert once helped foil a robbery near Goose Island in which two robbers were killed,

but he never talked about it.

No, not at all. My dad said he really didn't know about it until much later, I think after he died.

It sounds like he didn't really tell my grandma too much about it either.

It was July 9, 1951. Emmett worked for Brinks, the armored car company that moves big sums of money.

He was making a pickup at a dairy company. His fellow guard, Julius Blanchard, was alone outside in the truck.

Now, according to newspaper articles, Blanchard watched three robbers approach the truck carrying

shotguns, each wearing butcher smocks.

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